Paul Silk

Sir Evan Paul Silk KCB (born 8 February 1952)[1] is a former clerk in the British House of Commons. He was formerly Clerk to the National Assembly for Wales from March 2001 to January 2007, the most senior official of the Assembly, and acted as the principal adviser to the Presiding Officer, responsible for all the services that are delivered to Assembly Members through the Assembly Parliamentary Service.[1] In 2011, he was appointed as chair of the Commission on Devolution in Wales.[2]

Sir Paul Silk is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Constitution Reform Group (CRG),[3] a cross-party pressure group chaired by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury, which seeks a new constitutional settlement in the UK by way of a new Act of Union.[4] The Constitution Reform Group's Act of Union Bill 2018[4] was introduced as a Private Member's Bill by Lord Lisvane in the House of Lords on 9 October 2018, when it received a formal first reading. The Bill has been described by the BBC as "one to watch"[5] in the current Parliament.

In 2018, Silk was appointed Chair of the Membership Selection Panel of Glas Cymru. In 2019, he was elected Deputy Chair of the Representative Body of the Church in Wales.

Education

Silk was born in Crickhowell, Powys. He was educated at Christ College, Brecon; Brasenose College, Oxford, and Princeton University (USA).

He is currently an honorary Professor at the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. In 2019, he was made an Honorary Doctor of the University by the Open University.

Professional career

Silk served as House of Commons Clerk for a total of almost 25 years (1975–77, 1979–2001 and 2007–10),[1] clerking at different times three departmental Select Committees, including the Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs Committees.

Silk is a former Clerk of the Welsh Grand Committee. Clerk in charge of the Government of Wales Bill and contributed to drafting the first Standing Orders of the National Assembly. He has also worked as Presidential Adviser in the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, and has participated in a number of programmes for emerging democracies. He has written and lectured on Parliament and the Constitution.

Silk was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2015 New Years Honours List for services to parliaments and devolution.[6][7]

Publications

Principal author of the first four editions of the standard work How Parliament Works.[8]

Offices held
Senedd Cymru
Preceded by
John Lloyd		 Clerk to the National Assembly for Wales
2001 – 2007		 Succeeded by
Claire Clancy
gollark: > checkmate simulation theory 😎If this is meant unironically, then no.
gollark: (Almost) nobody analyses a computer program by simulating every atom in the CPU or something.
gollark: There are, still, apparently reasonably good and useful-for-predictions models of what people do in stuff like behavioral economics and psychology, even if exactly how stuff works isn't known.
gollark: We cannot, yet, just spin up a bunch of test societies with and without [CONTENTIOUS THING REDACTED] to see if this is actually true.
gollark: > Everything can, and should be tested objectivelySay someone tells you "[CONTENTIOUS THING REDACTED] weakens the fabric of society" or something. We can take this to mean something like "[CONTENTIOUS THING REDACTED] leads to societies being worse off in the long run". How can you actually test this?

References
  1. Roderick, Vaughan (1 September 2006). "Senior assembly official to leave". BBC News. Retrieved 19 July 2009.
  2. "Commission on Devolution in Wales / Silk Commission". Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  3. http://www.constitutionreformgroup.co.uk/
  4. https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/actofunion.html
  5. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50786212
  6. "No. 61092". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2014. p. N3.
  7. 2015 New Year Honours List
  8. Silk, P. and Walters, R. (1998) How Parliament Works. Longman.
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